Steven C. Hayes

Incredible book. This book is life changing. I use what I have learned in it almost every day.

The primary thesis of the book (and ACT in general) is that suffering is created and amplified when we turn away from the experience of our own suffering: when we try to not feel it, when we try to run from it, fight it, hide from it, or dismiss it.

Likewise, thriving blossoms when we turn towards our pain.

Hayes doesn't go into the neurobiology of hormesis, homeostasis, and the opponent process of the brain because this book is meant to be a pragmatic book and he succeeds at that. In fact, I think ACT and Hayes' A Liberated Mind are the best *answer* I've encountered so far to the question: how do I apply what we know about the opponent process, homeostasis, and hormesis to my everyday life? How do I apply it to my own difficult private experiences?

This is a book I feel everyone should read. Every sentence is packed with wisdom and insight. It is clearly Hayes' magnum opus.… (més)

Hayes is the “originator” (his term) of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT. ACT uses six pivots—defusion, perspective-taking, acceptance, presence (i.e., mindfulness), values, and action—to improve a person’s psychological flexibility in the face of adversity. Hayes is deeply enthusiastic about ACT—sometimes to a fault—but there’s a lot to be said for many elements of its approach. Of A Liberated Mind’s three sections, the first, which explains the mental roadblocks and misapprehensions that lead to rumination, self-condemnation, and similar mental ruts; and the second, which discusses the six pivots in detail, are the strongest. The third section is ostensibly about applying ACT to various facets of life (e.g. spirituality, work, addiction) but reads more like an extended infomercial for the approach.

ACT owes a lot to other methods for taming the mind, such as CBT, or Zen or metta meditation, and to be honest, the latter work far better for me because I find much of the ACT approach twee (e.g. imagine your difficult thoughts as leaves floating away on a stream, tell yourself “I’m incapable of walking around this room” while walking around the room, write your fears on notecards and carry them with you throughout the day). But my guess is those methods will probably work for people who find other methods too austere or abstract, and as the principles underpinning them all are the same, it can't hurt to have ACT in the arsenal alongside the other methodologies.… (més)